Linkstew

The second sentence of this Mac mini review made me chuckle. Mentioning that Steve Jobs can make someone want a one button mouse in a review about the first Mac to not come with a one button mouse struck me as amusingly ironic. But once I started thinking about that, a few more ideas occurred to me.

Not only does the Mac mini not come with a one button mouse, but Jobs' was encouraging people to use the mouses and keyboards they already have. Jobs was encouraging switchers to use the multi-button mouses they already own and are comfortable with. And why not? OS X supports multiple buttons and scroll wheels great.

Combined with the touchpad scrolling on yesterday's latest PowerBook, and it looks like Apple may be on the verge of getting over its fear of multiple buttons.

Oh, there's a lot I could say, but let's leave it at this: I already ordered an iPod shuffle (the "Do not eat iPod shuffle" footnote is pretty great), I kinda want a Mac mini to use as a home server, I'm going to wait for iPhoto 5 to actually deal with all the Europe pictures (and yay, it also finally stores movies, too!), and I really really can't wait for Tiger.

Folklore.org: Anecdotes about the development of Apple's original Macintosh computer.

Wow. There's some really inspiring stuff here about the creation of the Macintosh. It makes me wish I could change the world.

G4 CubeQuarium

Wow, that's a really nice looking acquarium. I want one! Pity Cube shells are probably still a little expensive to come by.

It's been a long weekend:

• Still no DSL at home.
• I was in LA all weekend for, among other things, an Eve 6 concert. -- it was good, though too short, but Max was in a weird mood (or on something), and they played too many songs of the new album (which meant I didn't know them, since the album doesn't come out for a month).
• If you're ever in Long Beach and you think taking Pacific Coast Highway is a better idea than taking the 405 to 101, holy christ you're wrong.
• As if it weren't obvious, I want one. The model I speced out for myself (including a 23 inch cinema display) came out to like $7,000. Boy I need a job... ;-)
• Thank god Panther will have Fast User Switching. Not a feature I personally need, but I'd been meaning to write a post for a long time about how important that feature was for homes with one computer. I guess I can cross that article off my todo list. Hopefully it comes out before November (so I can get a free copy under my student developer membership).
• And last but not least, I'm 500 pages into The Order of the Phoenix, and that's where I'm returning now.

First of all, I read this great article about a Mac user who sold a PowerBook (kinda) through eBay, got scammed, and got revenge the right way that was posted to seemingly every website I read today. My favorite quote by far was:

"I asked for help again in the Mac boards. Two Chicago residents replied, and the next morning, courtesy of Tim, I had 23 pictures of the house, the cars in the driveway (with license plate numbers) and the neighborhood. I'd like to see a Dell user do something like that at 4:30 in the morning for a complete stranger a thousand miles away."

Anyway, reading the Metafilter thread about that article, I came across this old wired article about a boy who was killed by a mail bomb after he scammed someone over the Internet. It's a fairly interesting read, and I spent awhile contemplating the narrative implications of the story's lack of any heroes. Also, the last two paragraphs are notably poignant. It's long, but it's worth a read.

Update, Sun Dec 15 18:28:30 PST 2002: I finally fixed the mac link and the mefi thread link above... Sorry about that.

While browsing VersionTracker the other day, I came across Crystal Ball, which is a D&D Dungeon Master tool for managing practically all aspects of running a D&D campaign, from keeping track of characters and NPCs, to randomly generating NPCs and monsters, to generating treasure and awarding experience, to keeping track of everything that can come up during a complicated melee. It made me sigh and say to myself "Wow, with this, the game would really be able to focus more on the story and less on the details of the rules. That'd be swell!"

It's a polished and very well done program, and it really makes me nostalgic to role play again. Of course, it's not like I have time between school and work, let alone do I know other people who have time, but it made me nostalgic all the same.

Oh, and better yet, it's a Mac only program (and better still, it runs well in OS X). So if you're a D&D player (or better still, a DM) and you have a Mac (better still, a PowerBook or iBook), you should definitely check this thing out.

So I was sitting there at work last week, minding my own business, when I looked up and saw Kevin walking up the ramp towards me. Before I had a chance to even think "What's he doing here?," I was on my feet to meet him at the door.

We exchanged greetings, and he handed me an unopened Civilization III box, and said "I bought it at Expo but haven't had a chance to play it..." (This was in response to this comment thread).

So I thanked him and I returned to preparing for a meeting.

Eventually I got home and made a few minutes to give the game a whirl, and here are my first impressions of the game. It should be noted that I've never played any Civ game before, so I'm coming to this with a fresh eye.

• My laptop is a little slow for this game, so there's a little too much access/load time and the graphics are a little jerky for my tastes. It's tolerable, but it'd all add up to drive me nuts. This is the first application I've found other than OS X itself that's made me wish I had a faster computer.
• I can't switch out of the game while leaving it running in the background, so I have to save and quit every time I want to so much as check my email. This drives me nuts. This also makes me wish I'd bought that mac bundle so I could just play the game on a nice fast dedicated computer to game on while still doing work on my laptop. Honestly, what's the point of having an amazing multi-tasking OS if I'm stuck doing one thing at a time?
• There seems to be a little too micro-management for my tastes. However, it is turn based, so this problem doesn't damn it. (In contrast, I can't stand any of {WarCraft, StarCraft, Homeworld, etc} because of the real time strategy and resource management aspect. I want to work on strategy, or manage resources, but not both at the same time.)

And uh, that's about all the more I had a chance to figure out, because there were emails that I had to attend to, and the continuous saving and restarting of Civ III was just burning way too much time and making me cranky that I had to stop.

I think I'll stick with EV Nova for now, because I'm free to switch applications at a moments notice with that game, and if I get a PowerBook G4 like I hope to this fall, I'll give Civ III another look.

So back in October, when I made that ridiculous list of which games on each platform I was looking forward to, I only listed Myth III for the Mac. And sadly, I didn't even choose to buy Myth III. After playing it at MacWorld SF, I was totally turned off by the way the game just seemed to have a slower pace.

But in that entry, I made reference to the ridiculous game situation on the mac. But you know what? I forgot the mac game I was anticipating even more than Myth III: Escape Velocity Nova.

And EV Nova came out today! Woohoo!

The graphics might look deceptively simple, but the gameplay is ridiculously addictive. I can't even begin to guess at how many hours I sank into the first two EVs, and this one has everything that was good about the first two and more. And the best part is, it's a Mac exclusive. I remember how envious my Windows using friends were back in the day over EV Override.

(Basically, it's a very open ended arcade space simulator (top-down view), where you start as a lowly shuttle pilot and go on to do any number of things, from being a trader, to a bounty hunter, to an explorer, to whatever you like. It's very addictive.)

Uh, anyway, if you're a Mac user and have spare time to kill (and a big link to download this 100 meg file with), definitely check it out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to play "one more mission" before going to bed... ;-)

A fantastic deal came across my desk this afternoon: A bundle containing a new PowerMac G4 733 (with a 40 GB HD, a GeForce2, and CD-RW) and a 17" Apple Studio Display (flat panel) for just $1269. Total.

It's an absolutely fantastic deal, but I can't really afford it right now. Well, I actually have about that much money, but it's my operating surplus, and I don't want to blow it all on this.

I suppose I could (attempt to) collect from the people who owe me money (OA), or sell my extra computer to my brother, or ask for money for my upcoming birthday, or all of the above...

Blah, so conflicted.

While browsing OS X Version Tracker just now, I noticed XPostFacto, "a utility to help install OS X on unsupported systems." Anyway, not only is that a handy tool to know about, but I adore the name. Just thought I'd share.

I notice that it was originally called "Unsupported UtilityX", so that they changed the name ex post facto just amuses me all the more.

My anticipation for the iPod was really amazing. For a year and a half music hasn't exactly been fun. I would occasionally buy a CD, and then I would rip it and put it on my Rio. Eventually I'd get tired of it and I'd assemble a new playlist composed of things I knew I liked, and that was that. I don't listen to music except when I'm walking, and putting new music on my Rio was a lot harder than just changing a CD in a discman, so I just didn't really expose myself to much new music. I didn't even bother to listen to a lot of the music I own. It was just too much effort.

I own nearly 300 CDs, and in any one month I probably listened to songs off of maybe 10 of them. But as my anticipation of getting an iPod grew, I realized that I had a lot of music just sitting around that wasn't ready. So I ripped a lot of my old CDs that I hadn't ripped before. I dug out my CDs of archived TMBG bootlegs and other assorted mp3s. And I copied them all onto my laptop, and organized them, and prepared playlists for my iPod.

And I had more fun in those couple of days of menially ripping CDs and moving files around than I've had with music in years. And that was before I even got my iPod.